George Clooney slams Russell Crowe, Leonardo DiCaprio

Actor Brad Pitt jokes around with his co-star George Clooney during a ceremony placing their hands in cement as part of the "Ocean's 13" movie promotion, Tuesday June 5, 2007 outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles.

George Clooney apparently isn’t close to Russell Crowe. But he still likes Brad Pitt. A lot.

The 52-year-old actor is on the cover of the December issue of Esquire, in which he talks about some fellow A-list actors.

His feud with Crowe started back in 2005, when Crowe called Clooney after calling the actor a “sellout,” according to the Huffington Post.

“The truth is that (Crowe) did send me a book of poems to apologize for insulting the (expletive) out of me, which he did,” Clooney said. “He picked a fight with me. He started it for no reason at all. He put out this thing saying, ‘George Clooney, Harrison Ford, and Robert De Niro are sellouts.’ And I put out a statement saying, ‘He’s probably right. And I’m glad he told us, ’cause Bob and Harrison and I were also thinking about starting a band, which would also fall under the heading of bad use of celebrity.’

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Crowe has been involved with several country/rock bands as side projects since the 1990s.

And that’s when he really went off on me,” Clooney said. “‘Who the (expletive) does this guy think he is? He’s a Frank Sinatra wannabe.’ He really went after me. And so I sent him a note going, ‘Dude, the only people who succeed when two famous people are fighting is People magazine. What the (expletive) is wrong with you?’”

Clooney said Crowe eventually sent him “a disc of his music and a thing of his poetry” and claimed he was “all misquoted.” “I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah. Whatever,’” Clooney said.

Clooney also talked a bit of smack about Leonardo DiCaprio. Clooney said the actors both own homes in Cabo San Lucas, where they would occasionally play basketball.

“You know, I can play. I’m not great, by any means, but I played high school basketball, and I know I can play. I also know that you don’t talk (expletive) unless you can play. And the thing about playing Leo is you have all these guys talking (expletive),” Clooney explains, revealing that he and his friends “beat them three straight: 11—0, 11—0, 11—0.”

“The discrepancy between their game and how they talked about their game made me think of how important it is to have someone in your life to tell you what’s what,” Clooney said. “I’m not sure if Leo has someone like that.”

Of course, it was all roses when the topic of Brad Pitt came up.

“For a long time now, Brad has been the biggest movie star in the world,” Clooney said. “He’s bigger than me, bigger than DiCaprio. And I really admire how he deals with that. It’s not easy for him. But he tries to be the most honest version of Brad Pitt that he can be. And he also remains unavailable. He’s still a giant movie star because you can’t get to him.”

“That doesn’t mean that I don’t think of him as incredibly talented and smart and all those things,” he said, “But you also can’t get to him.”